


Whales and Dolphins and Humans and Yeerks

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/F, Melancholy, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 10:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16574975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Years after the war, Cassie drags Aftran back to civilization.





	Whales and Dolphins and Humans and Yeerks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).



Cassie should be used to morphing by now but Aftran, for some reason, still throws her. It seems to her that it is easy to be a hawk or a wolf or a horse, because you always come back to being yourself eventually, but when it comes to a human body, she'd assumed it would be natural to pick one. But Aftran is not one to settle down. She flits from body to body, sometimes tall and sometimes short, sometimes old and sometimes young, many colors of skin and hair. Usually female, sometimes male. Her favorite is to be a redheaded woman, and Cassie tries not to ask her why, because when the subject of Karen comes up, she feels guilty.

Aftran has spoken to Karen, since returning to civilization. They have even spoken at length. Karen is a woman now, well able to form an opinion of Aftran and of Yeerks in general. She wants to like Aftran, but in the end the two of them will never be friendly. Too much history. So Aftran wears red hair because it is who she is, unfortunately, and mourns, but tries not to be too obvious about it because it will make Cassie sad.

Cassie wishes Aftran wouldn’t bother. She is sad already, for reasons that are hardly Aftran’s fault.

Aftran is, if anything, her source of joy, found after many years. She would share everything with Aftran, if Aftran would let her.

* * *

 

Aftran knew she could not settle down, not the way Cassie wanted, even when Cassie asked.

((Most Yeerks have taken on the form of an animal of some sort,)) Cassie told her.

((Like me, then.))

((No, not like you, not exactly. They do seem to appreciate the ability to move their own body and have stronger senses. But they still stay near civilization. Often near each other. They don’t just…))

((Become hermits?)) Run away?

They were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Cassie was in whale morph, intimidating and comforting at the same time. At that time she was still a dolphin—it was, then, all she could be, but it was all she really needed. She had spent the past…eight years? Decade? In peace. By herself, but not dissatisfied, guilty and afraid, as she always used to be. Dolphins had a sort of culture of their own, though it was not really sentient. And Aftran had always craved quiet.

The thought of returning to a world where she had been tortured and tortured others in turn was not a nice one.

((I know the hermit lifestyle is appealing,)) Cassie said, ((but there is a whole new world to be built. The Yeerk Peace Movement has been massively influential in the path Yeerks are taking in it. You’re a hero to them. You should come home.))

She wasn’t a hero. She could barely remember the little she’d done for the Movement, but she knew it hadn’t been much. Of course Cassie saw it differently; she’d always seen the best in Aftran. But truly, Aftran was happy enough in oblivion. No need to return.

((You don’t need me,)) she said.

((Yes,)) Cassie said, ((I do.))

I. Not we. I.

((Cassie, did something happen to you?))

((Many things happened to me. As they always did.)) A laugh, booming from a whale yet sad and tired. ((I wish you would come back, Aftran. It’s fine if you don’t. I just had to tell you what’s happened in the world, what you made possible. But I wish you’d come back.))

So she came back.

But she did not adhere to the guidelines suggested when she regained the morphing power through the efforts of local Andalite scientists. Surely, she said, a war hero shouldn’t be expected to become a nothlit. So they let her stay morph-capable, with her base state a dolphin. She mostly acquired humans, and mixed and matched their features.

Cassie suggested, time and time again, that she might find a favorite morph and stick to it. But she didn’t want to. And she knew Cassie understood, mostly.

“I wouldn’t give up morphing either,” she said. “I just wish you could be human instead of dolphin.” She shrugged. “It’s lonely, sometimes.”

Loneliness, Aftran knew, was why Cassie had sought her out in the first place.

* * *

 

Cassie searched for years before finding Aftran.

She set out shortly after the other Animorphs left Earth. It had been something she’d meant to do for years, looking for Aftran. Only she’d felt bad about leaving Tobias, poor Tobias, and she felt responsible for staying at least sort of in touch with Jake and Marco, making sure they kept themselves more or less together.

Once they had left, she allowed herself to follow a whim. She got passage on a fishing boat that sailed all over the Pacific. Every day she swam in the waters as a whale, calling out Aftran’s name, seeing if anyone heard. She didn’t know where Aftran might have gone since becoming a dolphin, where to look. She only knew she had to try.

She intended to return to the continent and normal life when she heard of Jake and Marco and Tobias returning. But the news never came.

She tried to ignore what that meant and focus on her mission.

It was years before she found her. Years of only talking to a select few sailors, years of salt and brine sinking into her clothes and pores, years of spending near half her time as a whale, so much time that it became to her her second skin. But one day she heard a thought-voice quietly calling back, almost disbelieving. ((…Cassie?))

Had she been in her human body at the time, she would have cried.

* * *

 

Aftran stays with Cassie when she can. Truthfully, she has a hard time relating with many people in this new world. The nothlit Yeerks have created  subculture that she has difficulty understanding, though she’s happy to reconnect with old comrades from the Peace Movement when she can. Humans understand little about life before peace in general. And Andalites…well, she saved one’s life once, but she still doesn’t trust them.

She also stays with Cassie because she feels a connection to her. Once, she thought it was a connection she had enlarged in her mind, Cassie being the last person she saw before becoming a dolphin. Now, around so many others, she knows it is true. She and Cassie have an understanding the likes of which she may never have with anyone else.

They become lovers when she has been back for only a couple months, on a lonely night when all she wants is to experience a new body to its fullest. She realizes after the fact that it should change things between them. For a couple days they’re awkward around each other. Then they aren’t anymore.

Their relationship is not exactly neat. She refuses to give up her base state of dolphin, so she can’t stay overnight except in a tank Cassie purchases as a sort of guest room. And they both have issues, so many issues. Aftran has forgotten how to do relationships of any type, and human romance is something in which she has no experience outside the vague premonitions of Karen’s mind. Cassie understands what a human relationship should be but not what a relationship with Aftran should be. She is possessive and standoffish in turns, sometimes claiming that she’s toxic for Aftran, that she forced her to return to a life she hates (not true, Aftran is out of touch but she does like community), other times briskly telling Aftran that even if she wants to wallow in the bay all day she’s needed at a conference so she better get out and morph. They can run hot and cold, but they try their best to balance.

She sees herself in a kaleidoscope. Part of her is the dolphin that flips through the water, that half-wants to run away and leave this dry, human husk of a land. Part of her is the human who leaves red hairs on Cassie’s pillows or snagged in her knitted sweaters. And then there is a part of her that is still a Yeerk, dazed by the brightness of the world around her, unsure if she can ever really be a part of it.

Cassie, at least, is very firmly and solidly Cassie, and Cassie stands by her. That she knows, and that she builds her life on.


End file.
